Agent Carter
So: Meet, again or for the first time, Agent Peggy Carter of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, whom we last saw being charming and moxie-filled in the first Captain America. She, as a rule, wears wonderful red lipstick and exceedingly sensible blouses.
Agent Carter
Peggy has a Murphy bed in her tiny studio apartment, a thing which used to seem SO COOL to me (YOUR BED GOES IN THE WALL!!!) but then I saw the Great Muppet Caper and I was like, "Wait, IT COULD CLOSE ON ME?!?" and so forget THAT.
[Peggy, incidentally, is bunking with a friend in HER flat -- a woman who gets killed in the first episode and sparks the whole "Everyone who gets close to me DIES" routine even though it turns out they'd only known each other a few weeks. Peggy's issue may just be that she needs more people to be close to her, so that the living-to-dead ratio is better.]
Agent Carter
Peggy also knows how to wield a weapon and shoot out people's tires, especially after a strange man accosts her in a dark alley and implies he's going to kidnap her. Peggy is seriously OVER the gentlemen of this era. Steve Rogers really set the bar high.
Agent Carter
And Peggy stands out in a sea of blandness, with her jaunty and amazing red lid and her blue blazer. Like a beacon of patriotism -- Captain America: The Remix.
Agent Carter
Atmospherics for you here, as Peggy goes to work at "the phone company" which is a front for her fancy secret-agenting at SSR. Now that the war is over and Cap is gone, nobody in her agency believes she did much other than fluff him. On several levels. Basically, gender politics are harshing her career buzz. Well, that and the fact that Cap is presumed dead.
Agent Carter
Indeed, this is what it looks like when a lady is forced to relive, again and again, the fact that she came SO CLOSE to nailing Chris Evans and now it's never going to happen. At least she can do it in a variety of saucy dressing gowns.
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Meet Howard Stark, played again by Dominic Cooper. The SSR thinks he's a terrorist, or something, but he's not -- at least, Agent Peggy Carter sure doesn't think so, because of how he helped her and Cap during the war. But Howard's weapons are showing up on the black market. Howard, who turns out to be the person Peggy thought was going to snatch her in the alley, tells Peggy that they were stolen, and enlists her to enliven her boring work life by working undercover to get them back for him, even though such antics would have her arrested for treason if caught. Meanwhile, Howard will sail off on his little power boat to God knows where so that he will be safe. I have no idea where Tony is in all this. But I do know where one important person is...
Agent Carter
Here is Jarvis, the Stark butler, who will go on to tutor Tony and be the voice of his computer system (in the form of Paul Bettany's pipes). Jarvis is very courteous, and exceedingly fussy -- he often wants to delay a mission until the laundry is folded, for example -- but occasionally thrills to the delicious danger of everything they're doing. At the end of the pilot he has a conversation with Howard Stark wherein he says Peggy is "the perfect choice" and that she won't suspect a thing, so I guess we're meant not to trust him? But it's clearly a red herring, because he's Jarvis. Alfred never turned on Batman, and nor will Jarvis turn on Peggy.
Incidentally, Jarvis also mentions having a wife. I wonder if THAT'S real, because obviously he and Peggy will have some sexual tension soon.
Chad Michael Murray
This is her colleague, CMM, who is back on television and flexing his facial muscles in that familiar manner. CMM is skeptical that Peggy's ladybrain could handle any of this difficult work and perhaps she could answer the phones?
Agent Carter
Peggy, undaunted, puts on a string of reasonable suits and tries to glean information from her office that will keep her one step ahead of them as they look for the chemical formula to Howard Stark's first stolen weapon.
Agent Carter
Peggy is a dab hand with disguises, y'all.
Agent Carter
Peggy also puts on a blonde wig and a gold sparkly dress, because she's tracked the formula to a nightclub, and her breasts are going to come in EXTREMELY handy.
Agent Carter
She brings a large an very enviable vintage purse with her, in which she presumably keeps Cunning Plans.
Bubbles
Bubbles from The Wire is extremely excited to see her, and willing to let her romance his secrets out of him, but he ends up dead later (by someone else's hand) so don't get too attached. I'm just glad he got work. I miss Bubbles.
Agent Carter
Peggy has tools at her disposal, like this gorgeous lipstick and case called "102 Sweet Dreams," which somehow knocks out Bubbles as soon as he goes for her but magically does not have any effect on Peggy. It's a one-way drugstick, I guess.
Agent Carter
Peggy also owns a watch whose face can be twisted off and used to crack a safe. But I BELIEVE later she throws out this same watch because it was exposed to Vita Radiation Protein Powder or whatever and it was going to get her busted with her bosses. Couldn't she have just HIDDEN it and then gone back to retrieve it? THINK, Peggy. Never forsake a good accessory.
CMM
SQUINT.
Agent Carter
Peggy then finds a weaponized version of the formula and is like OMG THANK GOD I BROUGHT THE BEST PURSE FOR GLOWING BALLS.
Agent Carter
Of course she manages to disarm it later with the use of her perfume. But her roommate gets murdered while she's doing this little home science experiment, so ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WOMEN WHO ENTER SCIENCE.
Agent Carter
SQUINT.
Agent Carter
Through it all, Peggy has perfect nail polish.
Agent Carter
And perfect lips.
Agent Carter
And a jewel on her purse that, when you pull it off, turns into a lock-picker. I assume Diana's/Kate's sapphire engagement bauble does the same, which will come in handy when Kate has to assist Princess Anne in a covert criminal investigation.
Agent Carter
GRRRRSQUINT.
Agent Carter
Peggy also wears sunglasses, such as when she is about to shoot a rando laser gun at someone who has wronged her and our great nation.
Agent Carter
Or when she has just fought for the dignity of a beleaguered waitress by jabbing a fork in the customer's stomach and threatening to make him bleed out unless he tips her big and then stops coming there ever again.
Agent CMM
SQUINT OF IF EVERYONE LOOKS HOTTER IN SUNGLASSES THEN WHERE ARE MINE.
Agent Carter
Need someone to stop a runaway villain? Peggy's your woman. Despite moving glacially and him having a five-minute head start, Peggy manages to grab a briefcase, beat the villain to a corner, and whack him in the knees.
Agent CMM
SQUINT OF IMMA 'BOUT TO KNOCK YOU SENSELESS.
James Frain
James Frain has a brief arc as one of two silent villains working for a Shadowy Something called Leviathan.
Agent Carter
Peggy, of course, manages to catch him and toss him up against a van and grill him, and then gets on the roof of said van WHILE IT'S MOVING to have a fistfight with the OTHER Silent Villain. It crashes and the weaponized Christmas ornament goes off down into a lake and explodes into Vita Radiation dust which you can mix with yogurt and your favorite vegetables for a healthy, well-balanced breakfast. Before he dies, James spills JUST ENOUGH information through his little mechanical traech zapper device (he can't speak without it), and sketches a pattern into the dirt when the talkbox breaks. Puzzles!
Agent Carter
SQUINT OF AAAAAAAAH VITA RADIATION NOOOOOO KEEP YOUR GOOD HEALTH AWAY FROM ME YOU BASTARDS.
Agent Carter
One of my favorite recurring bits: an old-timey radio show of Captain America adventures, complete with Foley artists hammering a piece of meat with their fists and crunching lobster claws to replicate the sounds of a brutal beat-down. In one particularly great scene, the radio is on at the house of a man Peggy wants to interrogate. He attacks her, but he doesn't realize LADYPOWER is a thing now and she kicks his ass. This is intercut with scenes from the radio studio of them staging a fight scene with all the sounds effects, and it's really, really well done.
Agent Carter
Also, I like the green argyle walls. ALSO, if you used to watch One Life To Live, you might recognize Erin Torpey -- the original Jessica Buchanan -- as the actress here playing the damsel in distress. GO SOAPIES GO.
Agent Carter
And there is a magic typewriter. Silent Villain -- the one who is still alive -- plugs some evil antennae into it and types messages and they are answered. You know, helpful instructions like YES KILL HER NOW PLEASE THANKS and LAY WASTE TO ANYONE WHO CAN BE TRACED TO ME NOW YES NOW RIGHT AWAY THANKS PLEASE so basically it's like if Prince George were a telepathic megavillain with a fondness for antiquated communications.
Agent CMM
SQUINT OF WTF ARE YOU SERIOUS.
Agent Carter
Also, Agent Carter briefly stays in one of Howard Stark's love nests, and I seriously almost passed out because the floors and built-ins are so lovely and I am geriatric.
Agent Carter
Howard also has a costume closet for his lovers, which came in very handy for Peggy. I don't know where she got the blonde wig from in the first episode, though. Maybe sometimes a girl just has one of those lying around. No judgment, Peg.
Lyndsy Fonseca
Lyndsy here, from Nikita and How I Met Your Mother and ALSO once of soaps, plays the sassy waitress at Peggy's regular haunt. We go through many hoops until finally Lyndsy (whose name is Angie on the show, which I keep wanting to type as Ayngy) gets Peggy a spot at her Women Only building that has a strict curfew but is also safe and full of girl power.
Agent Carter
Angie Ayngy turns out to be a real kick AND she has great shoes. When she takes Peggy around on a tour, she has lovely tidbits to say about how grand all the women in residence are, until they walk past one girl and she says brightly, "That's Sara. She's a slut."
Agent Carter
SQUINT OF THAT'S NOT LANGUAGE BEFITTING A LADY.